Posts Tagged ‘politics’

Before going on with my thoughts about little Donnie’s brain, I want to address two pieces of relevant reading I’ve done lately.

First, the short article by ‘Neuroskeptic’ entitled ‘Don’t blame Trump’s brain‘. Now, as anyone who’s read much of my blog knows, I consider myself a skeptic and a supporter of the skeptical community. However, I don’t entirely agree with Neuroskeptic here. First, describing people’s attempt to work out Trump’s psychology or neurology from his words and actions as ‘Trumphrenology’ is a silly put-down. In fact, all psychiatric conditions are diagnosed on the basis of observed words and acts – duh, what else? Unless there’s a brain injury or genetic abnormality. So the medical terms used to describe Trump and others do have some validity, though I agree that ‘medicalising’ the problem of Trump can be counter-productive, as it is with many ‘conditions’ which have appeared recently to describe the spectra of human behaviour. It’s more important, in my view, to recognise Trump as a career criminal than to put a psycho-neurological label on him. Then again, as someone who doesn’t believe in free will, the brain that makes Trump be Trump is of some interest to me. Second, Neuroskeptic describes the arguments of those who attribute medical conditions to people on the basis of behaviour as ‘circular’. This is false. Behaviour is more than s/he thinks it is. When we try to understand the brain, we look at how it behaves under particular conditions. According to Neuroskeptic ‘it’s rarely useful to try to understand a behaviour in neuroscientific terms’. If that’s true, then the monumental 700-page book Behave, by Robert Sapolsky, one of the world’s leading neurobiologists, was largely a waste of time. Third, Neuroskeptic questions the validity and ethics of Trump ‘diagnosis-at-a-distance’. This is absurd. Over the past two years alone, Americans have been subjected to several thousand tweets, hundreds of televised speeches and comments, and the day-to-day actions of the lad in the White House. Unless they make a real effort to switch off, most Americans can’t help knowing more about Trump than they do about just about anyone in their intimate circle. Where’s the distance?

Second, on The dangerous case of Donald Trump, by 27 people working in the field of mental health. I’ve not read it, but I’ve read the ‘summary’, attributed to Bandy X Lee, the contributing editor of the full book, though I prefer to believe that Lee, a respected Yale professor of psychology, had no hand in writing this summary, which is, syntactically speaking, the worst piece of published writing I’ve ever read in my life (I say this as a language teacher). I prefer to believe it was written by an intellectually disabled computer. I’m sure the full book is far far better, but still I’m amused by the variety of conditions Trump may be suffering from – ADHD, malignant narcissism, borderline personality disorder, psychopathology, sociopathology, delusional disorder, generalised anxiety disorder etc (OK that last one is what most reasoning Americans are supposedly suffering from because of Trump). All of this is a bit of a turn-off, so I won’t be reading the book. I tend to agree with what Neuroskeptic seems to be inferring – that we don’t need a psychiatric diagnosis as an excuse to get rid of Trump – his obviously asinine remarks, his insouciant cruelty and his general incompetence are in full view. His criminality should have seen him in jail long ago, for a long time. Further, the idea that a diagnosis of mental instability could lead to invoking the 25th amendment is absurd on its face. Anyone who’s read the 25th amendment should see that. I don’t see any evidence that Trump’s condition is deteriorating – he’s been consistently deceitful and profoundly incurious throughout his life. That means he was elected as a fuckwitted dickhead. Don’t blame Trump, blame those who elected him. And blame the lack of checks and balances that should make it impossible for just anyone to become President. Democracy does have its flaws after all.

So what are the patterns of behaviour that might lead to a diagnosis, which then might be confirmed neurologically – if, for example we were to apply a tranquillising dart to this bull-in-a-china-shop’s voluminous rump, then tie him up and probe his frontal and pre-frontal regions and their connections, in response to questioning and other fun stimuli (I’d love to be in charge of that operation)?

I’ll first list some notable Trump behaviours and traits, recognised by the cognoscenti, without suggesting anything about their relation to frontal cortex disfunction.

A tendency, or need, to take credit for everything positive that happens within his particular environment, and a concomitant tendency, or need, to blame anyone else for everything negative occurring in that environment

a winner/loser mentality, in which losers are often members of ‘losing’ cultures, sub-groups or entities (blacks, latinos, women, the failing NYT) and winners are judged in terms of pure power and wealth (Putin, Kim, Manafort, Fred Trump)

lack of focus in speeches and an inability to listen; generally a very limited attention span

frequently cited temper tantrums

lack of empathy and consideration for others, to quite an extreme degree, close to solipsism

emphasis on compliance and deference from others, inability to deal with criticism

extreme lack of curiosity

lack of interest in or understanding of ethics

lack of interest in or understanding of concepts of truth/falsehood

extreme need to be the centre of attention

I think that’s a good start. As to how these traits map on to psychopathological states and then onto cortical development, I won’t be so psychopathological as to provide clear answers. Most people I’ve spoken to suggest malignant narcissism as a pretty good fit for his behaviour – perhaps due to its all-encompassing vagueness? Wikipedia describes it as ‘a hypothetical, experimental diagnostic category’, which doesn’t sound promising, and it isn’t recognised in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR), though narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is. I suppose that some people want to particularly emphasise Trump’s malignancy, but I think NPD is bad enough. Here’s the Wikipedia description, drawn from the latest DSM and other sources:

a personality disorder with a long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance, excessive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy. Those affected often spend a lot of time thinking about achieving power or success, or on their appearance. They often take advantage of the people around them. The behaviour typically begins by early adulthood, and occurs across a variety of social situations.

Now, I came up with the Trump behavioural traits before I read this description, I swear. I think the fit is pretty exact, but it’s clear that those responsible for diagnosing someone with NPD don’t do so on the basis of brain scans. I’ve explored enough neurology to fairly safely say that NPD, psychopathy and many other psychiatric conditions just can’t, as yet be reliably correlated with neurological connections or lack thereof. Even schizophrenia, one of the more treatable psychotic conditions, is rarely described in terms of brain function, and is diagnosed entirely through behaviour patterns.

Having said this, all of these conditions are entirely about brain function, and in Trump’s case, brain development since early childhood. We’ll never get to know what precisely is up with Trump’s frontal cortex, partly because we’ll never get that tranquilising dart to penetrate his fat arse and to then practise Nazi-like experimentation… sorry to dwell so lovingly on this. And partly because, in spite of the galloping advances we’re making in neurology, we’re not at the knowledge level, I suspect, of being able to pinpoint connections between the amygdalae, the hypothalamus, the hippocampus and the various regions of the frontal and prefrontal cortex. I plan to do more research and reading on this, and there may be another blog piece in the offing. However, one thing I can say – Trump probably isn’t a psychopath. Psychopaths tend not to have temper tantrums – their emotional responses are minimal, rather than being exacerbated by life’s slings and arrows, and their violence is instrumental rather than impassioned. Their amygdalae – the founts of aggression and anxiety – are correspondingly reduced. Doesn’t sound like Trump.

Again, though reflection on Trump’s curious psyche may be intrinsically interesting, it’s his crimes that should do him in. As I’ve said before, the fact that he’s not currently in custody is a disgrace to the American criminal and legal system. His fixer is facing a jail term, and in pleading guilty to two felony counts of campaign finance violations, has fingered Trump as the Mr Big of that operation. Those authorities who have not arrested him should themselves be facing legal action for such criminal negligence. And of course other crimes will be highlighted by the Mueller team in the near future, though such scams as Trump University should have seen him jailed long ago. Others have suffered lengthy prison terms for less. But that’s the USA, the greatest democracy in the greatest, free-est and fairest nation in the history of the multiverse. Maybe such overweening pride deserves this fall…

He is fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity… manifesting but little deference for his fellows, impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires, at times pertinaciously obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, devising many plans of future operations, which are no sooner arranged than they are abandoned in turn for others appearing more feasible.

Trump, when asked who he consults with on foreign policy

You might be forgiven for thinking the above description is of the current US President, but in fact it’s a 19th century account of the change wrought upon Phineas Gage after his tragically explosive encounter with a railway tamping rod in 1848. It’s taken from neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky’s book Behave. A more fulsome analysis is provided in Antonio Demasio’s landmark work Descartes’ Error. The 19th century account is provided by Gage’s doctor.

Due to an accident with blasting powder the iron tamping rod blew a large hole through a part of Gage’s brain, exited through the top of his skull and landed some eighty feet away ‘along with much of his left frontal cortex’ (Sapolsky). Amazingly, Gage survived, though with great changes to his behaviour, as described above . Before the accident he had earned a reputation as a highly skilled, disciplined and reliable railway team foreman.

I was quite happy to be reacquainted with Gage’s story this morning, because in a recent conversation I was expounding upon Trump’s pre-adolescent nature, his tantrums, his solipsism, his childish name-calling, his limited language skills, his short attention span, his more or less complete ethical delinquency and so forth, about which my companion readily agreed, but when I suggested that this was all about a profoundly underdeveloped frontal cortex, she demurred, feeling I’d gone a bit too far.

Of course, I’m not a neurologist, but…

Any full description of Trump’s apparently missing or severely reduced frontal cortex needs to be evidence-based, but Trump is as likely to submit to any kind of brain scan or analysis as he is to present his tax returns. So the best we can do is compare his behaviour to those we know to have frontal lobe impairment.

Sapolsky tells us about the importance of the frontal lobe in making the tough decisions, the kinds of decisions that separate us from other primates. These are decisions in which our emotions and drives are activated, as well as higher order thinking involving a full understanding of the impact upon others of our actions.

Interestingly, in the case of Gage, his personality transformation meant that he couldn’t continue in his former occupation, so for a time he suffered the humiliation of being an exhibit in P T Barnum’s American Museum. I find this particularly intriguing because Trump has often been compared to Barnum – a showman, a con-man, a self-promoter and so forth. So in some ways – for example in Trump’s rallies, which he clearly loves to engage in – Trump has a dual role, as exhibitor and exhibit.

More importantly though, and this story is I think far more important than his injury and humiliation, Gage recovered almost completely over time – a testament to the brain plasticity which has recently been highlighted. On reflection, this shouldn’t be so surprising. Gage had been a person of rectitude and responsibility for decades before the disaster, and the neuronal pathways that his habitual behaviour had laid down, perhaps since early childhood, had only to be recovered through memory. It’s astonishing how this can happen even with subjects with less brain matter than ‘normal’ humans. Different parts of the brain can apparently be harnessed to rebuild the old networks.

The case of Trump, though, is different, as these higher order networks may never have been laid down. This isn’t to say there isn’t something there – it’s not as if there’s just a great hole where his frontal cortex should be. It’s more that his responses would map onto the responses of someone – a teenager or pre-teenager – who reliably behaves in a certain way because of the lack of full development of the frontal cortex, which we know isn’t fully developed in normal adults until their mid-twenties. And when we talk of the frontal cortex, we’re of course talking of something immensely complex with many interacting parts, which respond with great variability to different stimuli among different people.

But before delving into the neurological issues, a few points about the recent New York Times revelations regarding Fred Trump’s businesses, his treatment of young Donald and vice versa. The Hall & Oates refrain keeps playing in my head as I write, and as I read the Times article. What it suggests is a gilded, cosseted life – a millionaire, by current financial standards, at age eight. It seems that right until the end, Fred Trump covered up for his son’s business incompetence by bailing him out time and time again. This adds to a coherent narrative of a spoilt little brat who was rarely ever put in a position where he could learn from his mistakes, or think through complex solutions to complex problems. Trump senior clearly over-indulged his chosen heir-apparent with the near-inevitable result that the spoilt brat heartlessly exploited him in his final years. Fred Trump was a business-obsessed workaholic who lived frugally in a modest home and funnelled masses of money to his children, especially Donald, who basically hoodwinked the old man into thinking he was a chip off the old block. In the usual sibling battle for the parents’ affection and regard, Donald, the second son, saw that his older bother, Fred junior, was exasperating his dad due to his easy-going, unambitious nature (he later became an alcoholic, and died at 42), so Donald presented himself as the opposite – a ruthless, abstemious, hard-driving deal-maker. It worked, and Donald became his pretend right-hand man: his manager, his banker, his advisor, etc. In fact Donald was none of these things – underlings did all the work. Donald was able to talk the talk, but he couldn’t walk the walk – he had none of his father’s business acumen, as the Times article amply proves. In the late eighties, with the stock market crashing and the economy in free-fall, Trump made stupid decision after stupid decision, but his ever-reliable and always-praising dad kept him afloat. He also bequeathed to his son a strong belief in dodging taxes, crushing opposition and exaggerating his assets. The father even encouraged the son’s story that he was a ‘self-made billionaire’, and it’s not surprising that the over-indulged Donald and his siblings eventually took advantage of their ailing father – enriching themselves at his expense through a variety of business dodges described in the Times article. By the time of his death, Fred Trump had been stripped of almost all of his assets, a large swathe of it going to Donald, who was by this time having books ghost-written about how to succeed in business.

Of course it can be argued that Trump has one real talent – for self-promotion. This surely proves that he’s more than just a spoilt, over-grown pre-teen. Or maybe not. It doesn’t take much effort to big-note yourself, especially when, due to the luck of your family background, you can appear to walk the walk, especially in those rallies full of uncritical people desperate to believe in the American Business Hero. Indeed, Trump’s adolescent antics at those rallies tend to convince his base that they too can become rich and successful idiots. You don’t actually have to know anything or to make much sense. Confidence is the trick.

It’s not likely we’ll ever know about the connections within Trump’s frontal and prefrontal cortices, but we can learn some general things about under-development or pre-development in those regions, and the typical behaviour this produces, and in my next post – because this one’s gone on too long – I’ll utilise the chapter on adolescence in Sapolsky’s Behave, and perhaps other texts and sources – apparently Michelle Obama brought Trump’s inchoate frontal cortex to the public’s attention during the election – to explore further the confident incompetence of the American president.

I’ve watched with increasing fascination, bemusement, amusement and horror, the display of hypocrisy, smugness, disbelief and final panic that has been the Republican attempt to confirm sweet little Brett Kavanaugh as the next Supreme Court justice in the USA. And I have to admit from the outset that, as a working class boy from one of the least privileged suburbs in the hinterland of Australia, I will admit to having an unapologetic anti-ruling class bias. So you might take my incredibly insightful commentary as follows with a grain of salt.

It has been the apparent aim of America’s current Chief Sexist to stack the US Supreme Court with like-minded sexists, so that they can overturn Roe v Wade and impress upon society that if girls are stupid enough to get pregnant they have to give birth to the consequences and devote their lives to making the best of their offspring – at least the male ones.

So with that in mind, the Chief Sexist has sought out a facilitator for this desired outcome, this happy return to the patriarchal status quo. However, the Chief Sexist has a not-so-hidden other agenda. Having engaged in a spot of what losers may call hanky-panky re financial and other dealings, including with those who refuse to recognise their place within the patriarchy, he wants protection from those, such as the FBI and other insufferable meddlers, who seek to challenge the Natural Authority of the Sexist in Chief in his mission to make America male again, and to ensure that his leadership will not be circumscribed by Loser’s Law. And he has found in little Bretty an acolyte who will perfectly serve his purpose.

Okay, enough. As I write, the hearing into Kavanaugh’s fitness to be on the US Supreme Court is over, and the vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee will take place tomorrow morning. The committee consists of 11 Republicans and 10 Democrats. I believe that if this vote approves Kavanaugh’s confirmation, there will be a full senate vote to confirm him. I’m hoping and expecting the confirmation to fail at either of these two hurdles.

I haven’t watched the televised hearing of Blasey Ford’s and Kavanaugh’s testimonies, due to squeamishness, so I’m relying on the reporting and commentaries of journalists and other experts. From all reports, Blasey Ford’s testimony was authentic, detailed, insofar as a memory from 36 years ago can be, and convincing. Most importantly, she stated that she was 100% certain that it was Kavanaugh who attacked her. Kavanaugh, who of course had no story to relate since he denies that the activity ever occurred, was in some ways disadvantaged by the situation – how many ways can you deny an occurrence or go on about what an upstanding citizen you are?

And yet. As many people have pointed out, this wasn’t a hearing which was designed to uncover the truth. It pitted two people against each other, with the reward going to the most convincing, in the subjective judgement of the audience – not the TV audience, but the audience of 21 Senators. And considering that this hearing was all about deciding someone’s fitness for the Supreme Court, it was a total farce. And the blame for this lies squarely with the Republican Party.

The GOP and its financial backers have had one aim in mind with all this, to get a second conservative, or ultra-conservative, Justice on the Supreme Court during this presidential term. This was put in the bluntest terms by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell only a few days ago, when he promised his ‘base’ that, no matter what, Kavanaugh would take his place on the court in the very near future. So much for due process, remembering that it was McConnell who orchestrated the failure of Obama’s nomination, Merrick Garland, to even get a hearing for the best part of a year.

Apparently GOP Senator Lindsey Graham agrees with me that this whole process is an ‘unethical sham’, but for entirely different reasons. As to what his reasons are, they’re of no interest to me. What I’m interested in is the allegations against Kavanaugh, why they’ve arisen now, whether they should be taken seriously, and what should be done.

Before proceeding I should say that not only do I prefer to avoid highly emotional moments such as the above-mentioned testimonies, I also avoid, as far as I can, listening to or watching Donald Trump. I decided that I didn’t want such a repellant individual on my TV or computer screens long before he entered politics – so it wasn’t a political decision. I also don’t accept that Trump is a Republican or a Democrat, or even a politician in any meaningful sense of the word. Just what I think he is, I won’t elaborate on here. So I tend to fast-forward or mute when the cable news networks upon which I rely for information switch to the White House or a Trump rally. Where Trump’s views on this matter are relevant, I’ll rely on other sources for his statements.

As Kavanaugh’s confirmation process approached, a great deal of attention became focused on his views re Roe v Wade, presidential powers, immigration, gun rights, environmental issues and the like. His work as a Republican Party operative during the G W Bush presidency, and as assistant to Ken Starr during the Clinton impeachment process, and his entire background of right-wing privilege, his attendance at an exclusive all-boys Catholic high school, followed by Yale University and Law School, followed by clerking for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, mark him out as a scion of the conservative ruling class. Naturally there has been great concern among progressives about his promotion to the Supreme Court.

Concerned oppositionists naturally began digging into Kavanaugh’s past, as I assume has always been the case when nominees of a partisan persuasion get close to being confirmed. A chink in the armour appeared to be his activities as a teenager, and rumours about heavy drinking and related unseemly behaviour, especially in the treatment of girls/women. Kavanaugh’s high school year-book contained hints of such, but he emphatically denied any wrong-doing, apart from the odd ‘cringeworthy’ moment. However, it was being noticed by Kavanaugh’s critics that he seemed to be using his legal skills to be evading direct answers to more specific questions, both in regard to his past and in regard to his views on key issues that might come up before the Supreme Court in the future.

Then came a bombshell claim about an incident that occurred 36 years ago at a party during Kavanaugh’s high school years, when he was 17. The claim was about an assault which may have amounted to an attempted rape. The claimant, Professor Christine Blasey Ford, was 15 years old at the time. As Republicans sought to play down or repudiate the claim, and others sought to ‘weaponise it’ against the GOP and its attempt to rush everything through, many observers questioned the timing. However, Blasey Ford had written to Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein detailing the incident back in July, in confidence. When the letter was apparently leaked to the press, Republicans tried to blame Feinstein and the Democrats for leaking it, claiming a smear campaign conducted by the opposition. This has been denied both by Feinstein and by the press. What seems to have happened is that stories of Kavanaugh’s alcohol-fuelled bad behaviour at high school and college were gradually gaining traction, as well as rumours regarding Blasey Ford’s letter, which eventually led to the leak, and which led to further allegations, from two other women. All three have allowed themselves to be named, and have expressed a preparedness to testify under oath and to co-operate fully with an FBI investigation of their claims. Clearly this relates to Kavanaugh’s nomination, and to concerns these women have as to his fitness for such high office.

Still the question can be asked as to why these serious allegations weren’t brought up much earlier. Trump’s ridiculous claim that Blasey Ford, or her parents, would obviously have gone to the police 36 years ago if the incident had really happened, can be easily dismissed. My own childhood tells me that my parents would be the last people I would confide in at that age, were I a witness to such events, nor would I or the girls I knew at the time have reported such behaviour to the police. Not a chance. My guess is that conservative upper-class, reputation-obsessed kids would be far less likely to expose themselves and their families to the opprobrium of having played any part in such activities, however unwittingly, than mere human dross such as myself.

Again, as time went by, these young women would have been concerned to preserve their reputations at least until those reputations were well-established. It’s notable that of the three female complainants who have been named in the press, Christine Blasey Ford is now a widely published professor of psychology at Palo Alto University and a research psychologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Julie Swetnick has worked in Washington in the public and private sectors, and ‘has held several government clearances, including with the State Department and the Justice Department’.Deborah Ramirez works for the Boulder County housing department in Colorado and has worked with a domestic violence organisation, for which she remains on the board. All three appear to be highly credible, and have far far more to lose than to gain in coming forward in this way – sometimes reluctantly. Finally, I don’t see the fact that these women have come out about these allegations recently as a trap. The ‘Me Too’ movement, the fact that the object of these serious allegations is on the verge of becoming a very powerful Supreme Court Justice, as well as pressure from the press and from friends and family previously confided in, have all doubtless played their part. In any case, the question of whether these allegations are true is far more important than their timing. And that brings me to the response of Kavanaugh. I’ll focus on that in my next post.

There are undoubtedly billions of worthier subjects to focus on than Trump, but I do find it hard to look away for long from the slow-moving train wreck – and I’m still nursing my prediction that he’ll be out by year’s end. Of course I keep stumbling at obstacles, and anything that gets in the way of justice being the same for everyone seems to me an unnecessary and illegitimate obstacle. Now it’s this ridiculous notion that you shouldn’t charge a President around election time. It’s bullshit. It should be absolutely clear that you should charge any felon precisely when all is in order to charge him, no matter what time of year it is.

But that apparently isn’t how it goes in the USA, and so we have to wait for two whole months to bring charges, assuming this ‘etiquette’ is followed. And then what happens after the mid-term fall-out? Too close to Christmas?

Needless to say, I’m completely opposed to the truly criminal notion that you can’t charge a head of state while in office. Only in America is such a notion even thinkable – a testament to one of the worst political systems in the western world.

Anyway, no sense bemoaning a system that the US Congress, fourth estate and intelligentsia are too jingoistic to even be capable of examining let alone reforming. So instead I’ll focus here on the legal jeopardy Trump finds himself in from various directions, as we wait for the Mueller team to hopefully finish him off.

Firstly the Michael Cohen case. Cohen is currently out on bail awaiting sentencing on eight criminal counts he has pleaded guilty to. According to this article in The Hill, from August 21, Cohen won’t be sentenced until December 12, which seems an eternity to me. It’s expected that he’ll do a fair amount of jail time.

What has this to do with Trump? Cohen was his fixer and I’m not sure how many of the felonies he’ll be sentenced on relate to Trump or his organisation. Some reports claim that more than one felony relates to the 2016 campaign. What is clear is that Cohen seems bent on revenge for the way Trump, who never treated him particularly well in spite of his loyalty, dropped him like a hot potato shortly after Cohen’s offices and home were raided by the FBI. In pleading guilty to one charge of campaign violations relating to the Stormy Daniels payment, Cohen implicated Trump as the person who directed his activities. This should have led directly to Trump’s arrest, but for some reason this hasn’t happened. In any case it stands to reason that whatever Cohen’s sentence on this particular count, Trump’s should be greater, as the ‘Mr Big’ in this case.

Of course Trump’s legal jeopardy from the Cohen direction is probably, or hopefully, more considerable than just the Stormy matter. Cohen struck a plea deal with the SDNY, clearly in the hope of getting a lighter sentence in return for dirt on Trump, but the plea deal seems to have been minimal, most likely because the Mueller team, who are surely in close contact with SDNY, have enough dirt on Trump already (particularly from the raid on Cohen’s offices and home, conducted by the SDNY, but nothing prevents the FBI from sharing information – in fact such sharing is essential), and they don’t like working with criminals if they can help it. Still, they may call on Cohen if they need to, which all spells trouble for Trump. Meanwhile, Emily Jane Fox writes In Vanity Fair (September 11) that Cohen’s attorney is set to meet New York State tax officials who are looking into the Trump Organisation’s finances. Hopefully Cohen will have more damning stuff on that topic. I should also add that it’s this SDNY probe into Cohen that has granted immunity to the CFO of the Trump Organisation, as well as to David Pecker, chief of the National Enquirer, a gutter mag dedicated to spruiking Trump’s ‘qualities’ and to ‘catching and killing’ negative stories about him. So, more legal jeopardy there.

Secondly, on those New York State tax officials. A Washington Post article from July 20 revealed that the state’s tax agency is investigating Trump’s personal charity (sic), the Trump Foundation. New York’s embattled governor, Andrew Cuomo, who appears to have launched the investigation under pressure from constituents, has said that the probe could lead to criminal charges. Trump’s children would be involved as well as himself.

Thirdly, the tax probe comes on the heels of a civil suit, filed in June by the New York Attorney-General, claiming that Trump and three of his children ran a charity ‘engaged in persistently illegal conduct.’ The Attorney-General’s department has been considering pursuing criminal charges, but apparently there’s a race to become the next Attorney-General there, and the Democratic candidates are all promising to go after Trump if elected. They’re hoping to focus on the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution, which is altogether a good thing. Not being well up on how the US electoral system works, I’m not sure how long it will take for this all to be sorted, but it definitely looks like there will be an annihilation of Republicans in the mid-terms, and this Attorney-General race will be caught up in that. So, more trouble for Trump.

Fourthly, the next Manafort trial starts soon, and it involves Russia. Manafort is apparently trying to negotiate a plea deal as I write, one that won’t involve dumping on Trump, and won’t involve actually going through the trial process. It’s hard to imagine that happening. An article in Fortune, out yesterday (September 13) claims that a deal has more or less been struck, but it’s hard to imagine such a deal not involving Trump. This deal may be announced as early as today. Considering that the Mueller team holds all the cards – a slam-dunk set of convictions on the second trial, and the possibility of retrying the ten counts that were left undecided in the first trial, it’s hard to imagine that Mueller wouldn’t have extracted some damning evidence about Trump, the campaign, and Russian money in exchange for any deal. Maybe Trump won’t be touting Manafort as a ‘great guy’ for much longer – but on the other hand, Manafort may just be lookingfor a way to avoid the expense of a court case he can’t win, and he’s hanging out for a pardon from Trump.

And fifthly, the Mueller probe itself. I see it dividing into three parts – conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and financial crimes.

Conspiracy charges will depend on whether Trump and/or his campaign knew about the Russian interference in the 2016 elections, an interference amply documented in the two speaking indictments, in February and July of this year, which together charged 25 Russian individuals and three Russian companies with hacking of servers and hijacking of social media sites to influence the election outcome, entirely in Trump’s favour. No American citizens were charged, but other persons ‘known and unknown’ to the investigators were repeatedly mentioned. The second indictment also raised profound suspicions that the Trump campaign had knowledge of the hacking, because of certain dates matching comments at the time by Trump himself. Apart from this there is the meeting at Trump Tower on June 9 2016, which I personally think is less significant, but about which there have clearly been cover-ups and lies by the Trump campaign and administration, including by Trump himself. It has always appeared to me highly likely that Mueller has an abundance of material on this conspiracy.

On obstruction, although much of the focus here has been on the firing of James Comey for the illicit reason of trying to stop the Russia investigation, it seems clear to me that the relentless public attacks on the Mueller enquiry, the FBI and the DoJ, and the hounding of specific officers within those departments, are all very serious cases of obstruction of justice, so flagrant and criminal in intent in fact that they should have warranted dismissal from office long ago. These are questions, of course, about the limits to free speech, but one would think that such limits would indeed apply to the Head of State when speaking of cases in which he himself is implicated. The more power you have to influence, the more responsibility you should bear in speaking of such institutions as investigating services, the judiciary and the free press, a matter which should be inscribed in law. In any case it’ll be interesting to see what the enquiry’s findings are on this topic. They should be fulsome.

On financial misdealings and any other bits and pieces of criminality that might be uncovered during the enquiry, There’s potentially a lifetime of stuff there. It’s pretty certain that Mueller has all the tax returns, and knows a thing or two about Deutsche Bank’s dodgy dealings with Trump. This is the most murky of areas, obviously, but there are outstanding financial experts on Mueller’s team who’ll be having a wonderful time joining all the dots.

So who knows when the fireworks will start, but I’ll be happy to be viewing them from a safe distance. Meanwhile I’ll try, really try, to focus on other things for a couple of months.

I’ve not read the book The dangerous case of Donald Trump, which seeks to highlight the POTUS’ mental health issues, because like many an ignoramus, I consider myself already an expert on these matters. The term ‘boy-king’, used by Sam Harris among others, sums up this individual quite nicely. ‘Spoilt brat’ is another term that comes to mind. It’s a term that would repay some simple analysis. Food, or a holiday, or a romantic evening, that is spoilt usually can’t be unspoiled. It’s gone, it’s done, you need to start again with another meal, another evening, another holiday. A spoilt child, unfortunately, is the same. He’s spoilt forever – that’s why early childhood is so important. I’m sure the psychologists analysing Trump have focused particularly on his childhood, as it is always key to understanding the adult, as the famous Dunedin longitudinal study and countless other studies have shown. Think also of a spectacular and tragic example – the Romanian orphans discovered after the fall of Ceausescu, not spoilt brats of course but permanently damaged by extreme neglect. And another – Masha Gessen’s biography of Vladimir Putin provides insight into his horrifically malign personality through glimpses of a bizarre childhood in the devastated post-war city of St Petersburg.

I don’t know much about Trump’s childhood, but I imagine it to be very much like that of the proud patrician Coriolanus in one of my favourite Shakespeare plays. Coriolanus is both spoilt and il-treated by his mother, so that he struts about from the get-go with an air of privilege and power, a sense of self-importance which is completely unearned. Trump is much the same – too smart to actually learn anything, too important to need anyone’s advice. Of course, Coriolanus is a brave warrior, while Trump is a coward. And yet, in the field of business he’s also a scrapper, relishing the language of macho thuggery.

But enough of the literary guff, Trump’s less than adequate upbringing is plain to see in his solipsistic, tantrumming output. Amongst many screamingly serious red flags was his question to a military authority, ‘If we have all these nuclear weapons, why don’t we use them?’ Apparently he asked this question repeatedly. It’s a question an adolescent, or rather a pre-adolescent, might ask (most adolescents are pretty sophisticated these days). It can be interpreted two ways – he wasn’t being serious, he was just attention-seeking, or he was being serious and he genuinely couldn’t grasp the enormity of what he was saying. Both interpretations, and they could in some sense both be true, are indicative of a pre-adolescent mind-set. And by the way, so is his constant repeating of the same phrases, which reveal the lack of language skills of the pre-adolescent. And there are many other examples – the nasty name-calling, the transparency and ineptitude of his lies and attempted cover-ups, the neediness, the impulsiveness, the attention deficit, everything he says and does just about.

But here’s the problem I keep coming back to. Trump’s pre-adolescent behaviours have been on display since his pre-adolescent days, much more publicly than with your common or garden spoilt brat. So why was he ever allowed to make a tilt at what Americans would undoubtedly describe, with much reason, as the most responsible position on the face of this earth? THIS is the greatest conundrum of the Trump presidency. Americans like to argue that anybody can become President, as if that’s one of the things that makes America great. It’s a very very very very bad argument.

Another screamingly obvious point: this spoilt brat should be removed from office because, as a perpetual pre-adolescent, someone who will never become an adult, he’s totally incompetent for this position. Yes he has probably committed crimes, but that’s not why he should be removed. It’s because he’s actually just a little boy. He’s not responsible for his actions. It’s not his fault that can’t think clearly, that he’s impulsive and tunnel-visioned and profoundly insecure and pathologically self-absorbed. In fact, if he’s ever indicted, he should probably be tried as a minor, because that’s what he is. But that he is President, that will forever be America’s shame.

The famous fable of the Emperor’s new clothes comes to mind. In this variant, everybody tries to pretend they can’t see that their President is a little boy. Some of his long-time associates or playmates quite genuinely support him, are possibly quite genuinely oblivious of his profound stuntedness, perhaps because like is attracted to like. Others have found him a ‘useful idiot’ to be cynically manipulated for their own ends. Most of those opposed to him prefer to pretend he’s fully adult so that they can punish him and all his cronies to the full extent of the law. But another over-riding reason for all the pretence is that nobody around the President, or indeed in the whole country, wants to take responsibility for allowing a little boy to become their POTUS. A little boy who’d been quite clearly a little boy since he was a little boy, some sixty years ago. And it didn’t take anything like a degree in psychology to see it.

A spoilt, brattish, hurt little boy with the power of the POTUS in his hands is a very frightening thing. Bringing all this to an end isn’t going to be easy, but doing so as quickly and painlessly as possible has to be the highest priority.

And what about Pence? If Americans come to their senses and realize that all of a little boy’s political decisions, whether in office or before, should be invalidated because he’s a minor, then they’ll avoid the post-Trump disaster of President Pence. Will they do that? Very very unlikely. That would be a very adult undertaking indeed.

some semi-reluctant future reading – or maybe I’ll just watch the video

This morning I heard an American pundit saying Trump has got to change his approach and become more co-operative with investigating authorities, because his strategy isn’t working. Everybody is offering Trump free advice but he’s unlikely to take it because he’s Trump. People don’t change very much, they certainly don’t become completely different people, certainly not after the age of seventy. Trump has spent his life among crooked rich people, he was brought up by crooked rich people, he only admires crooked rich people, and he will die as crooked as he has lived. That’s his fate.

What pundits should really be working on, IMHO, is limiting his power and curbing his destructive tendencies. Now that the cognoscenti are coming to realise that better vetting processes should have applied to candidates for the overly-powerful position of POTUS, they should be doing their utmost to put obstacles in the way of that power (followed by root and branch reform of the entire political system once Trump is dumped). For example, putting real pressure on White House staffers, many of whom should know by now that the writing’s on the wall, to resign en masse. Or even just to suggest that they do so? Rats tend to desert a sinking ship, but perhaps not if they don’t sense any land in the offing, a safe haven to run to. So maybe it would be the most ethical thing to do, now, to entice Trump’s enablers to abandon him, not entirely without penalty, but with less penalty than if they stick with him to the end. A bit like offering limited immunity. And in the same way, the media should be onto those in Congress who are enabling Trump, or are not being sufficiently vocal in their opposition, or their position in general, to speak their minds more clearly. It’s time for more media hounding, for the sake of the beleaguered nation. Two of Trump’s most vocal supporters in Congress are now being prosecuted as swamp creatures, not surprisingly. More needs to be made of this.

I’m not talking here about ‘weaponising’ the media, or being partisan. This is clearly about corruption and the law. My own early recognition of Trump as a boorish, tasteless, noisome, proudly ignorant, self-serving buffoon had little to do with politics. I’ve learned over this year that he was a ‘lifelong Democrat’ until a few years ago. I didn’t believe it any more than I believe he’s a Republican now. He knows as much about politics, history and international affairs as he does about science. But I’ve also learned more about his inherent dishonesty and crookedness. The responsible media generally recognise this, and they should play, more openly, a heroic role in bringing him down. It wouldn’t be a partisan role, it would be about nation-building, or nation-repairing.

It’s important here not to be partisan, and that’s why it’s essential to focus on the law rather than on politics. Certainly there needs to be a political backlash against Trump, and against his Republican enablers, but I’ve already expressed my skepticism of impeachment, a political process, as a means of dismissing political leaders. All citizens should be subject to the law, regardless of position or profession. This is not to say the mid-term elections aren’t important, as the country needs more liberals and democrats in positions of authority to counter Trump’s fascistic or mafioso-style approach to government. However, the mid-term elections are over two months away, plenty of time for more damage to be done to the country’s political institutions by an increasingly desperate ‘Commander-in Chief’.

The preposterous and disgustingly juvenile, and typically American, idea that their POTUS may be above prosecution simply because he’s too important and vital to the workings of the State, needs to be punctured beyond repair. This seems to me a high-priority issue. Of course, the fact that the USA has given its POTUS too much power will make things difficult in the immediate post-Trump period, but this is a tough lesson that needs to be learned. It seems a constitutional crisis may be just what’s needed to get the nation to wake from its jingoistic slumber and start working on a better, more collegial and distributed power system than the current hero-worshipping laughing-stock it has created for itself.

So let’s go to the issue of indictment, and later we’ll go to the aftermath, which will presumably be a Pence Presidency – not a pleasant prospect, from what I’ve heard.

Unfortunately the indictment of a sitting President is regarded as a constitutional matter – unlike the indictment of any other citizen, presumably. This is a situation that should be rectified. Section 3 of Article 1 of the US Constitution puts it thus:

“Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust,or Profit under the United States; but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”

Note the unclear wording here. It talks about impeachment first, which to my mind, is irrelevant. It’s the last part that is relevant, though it gets entangled with impeachment – ‘The party convicted shall nevertheless be liable to and subject to indictment’, etc. But impeachment is not about being convicted. The law convicts, surely. The Constitution was signed into law in 1787, and is a source of understandable pride to the American people, but it’s hardly to be expected that it would make everything clear and precise for the next two hundred-odd years. It looks as though indictment should follow impeachment, which is, it seems, misrepresented as ‘convicted’, but it cannot surely be the case that if the President commits what constitutes a ‘high crime or misdemeanour’ (and I really hope that term is clear in US law) he has to be impeached before being charged. That, to me, would be outrageous. It’s very obviously the wrong way round – though of course, you’d have to be sure that the Justice Department had a very sound case before proceeding – perhaps with a speaking indictment (I really like them things). And then, of course, if conviction occurs, impeachment wouldn’t be an issue. It would just be a matter of a change of residence.

It’s astounding, and frankly appalling, that some soi-disant constitutional lawyers really do argue for immunity (while in office) due to the heavy duties of the Presidency (duties that Trump largely avoids), while other experts argue that Presidents really do have the power to pardon themselves. It’s yet another indication that Yanks, even high-powered legal eagle ones, are in thrall to the wankeries of their worst movies, featuring the vigilante superhero out to save the State from itself, with collateral damage just being part of the thrill.

Considering such jejune but baked-in attitudes about their ‘commander-in chief’, it’s unlikely that Americans will learn much from the current debacle. Still no proper vetting at the outset, still no reduction of pardoning and other powers, still no integration of the Presidency with Congress, still insufficient checks and balances, still the same childishly carnivalesque two-horse races every four years, still the same embarrassing, unreflective jingoism. And still, I find it all quite fascinating. I’m just glad I’m not actually there.

So what will happen by years’ end? Presumably impeachment proceedings, depending on the numbers in both houses – I haven’t yet read up on impeachment, what it requires and entails, and I’ll be doing that soon. But presumably impeachment isn’t easily enforceable, and Trump will ignore it and rely on his base to protect him. That’s when things will get really interesting.

While convalescing from a severe viral infection, I’ve been paying almost too much attention to MSNBC and CNN as they more or less impotently report on the brutal farce that is the Trump presidency.

In the last year or so I’ve been on a steep learning curve about the workings of the US electoral system, and its politico-economic system in general. Much of what I’ve learned has frankly appalled me. And it may take a few posts to get all of this off my chest. We’ll see.

A couple of days ago, on the Rachel Maddow show, a legal pundit and former Attorney-General David Hickton, describing a matter relating to foreign interference in the US, just happened to drop the line ‘the world’s greatest democracy’, apropos of nothing much at all. It wasn’t spoken with discernible pride or even emphasis; it was a perfunctory remark. And I’ve heard this perfunctory remark, or variations of it – ‘the leader of the free world’, ‘the greatest nation on earth’, ‘the country everyone looks to as an example’, ‘the greatest beacon of freedom’ – so often, and trotted out so mindlessly, that it occurs to me that it is probably part of an educational edict or axiom in the USA, imprinted in the first school years at age 5 or 6. Any American who applies critical thinking to this axiom places herself at extreme risk, it seems to me. But it also seems obvious to me that such application, as to the axioms of Euclid or the Catechism, will yield many positive results.

It’s hard to know where to begin with this criticism. Of course I’ve already highlighted some problems in previous posts – here, here and here. Most of this criticism has been about the structure of the US system – giving their ‘commander-in-chief’ far more power than occurs in other democracies; fatally separating parliament, or congress, from the President and his personally chosen (and also overly-powerful) staff, including such vital positions as Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor, Chief of Staff, Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, among others. Congress has some oversight in the appointment to some of these positions, but astonishingly none of the people appointed to these high offices need to have had previous political experience, or to have been elected through any parliamentary process.

Other Presidential privileges I’ve learned about – somewhat goggle-eyed I have to say – are extensive veto and pardoning powers, power to select members of the high judiciary, and, most incredibly, the ability to turn what appears to be a Presidential whim into immediate action, as in the arbitrary imposition of tarrifs and the separation of children from parents seeking asylum on the southern border. Neither of these extraordinary and extremely problematic directives seem to have required any kind of congressional oversight whatsoever. Looking for a recipe for dictatorship anyone? Just check out the USA.

This is what the US system allows, but virtually no prominent member of the fourth estate has had anything critical to say about it. All their reporting is about the trees – their educational brainwashing from childhood apparently blinds them to a forest that was never healthy and is now dying fast.

The USA’s love of democracy means that the whole nation has significant national elections every two years, unlike in the Westminster system (approximately 3 years in Australia and New Zealand, 4 years in Canada and 5 years in the UK). Presidential elections in particular are hyped-up affairs involving massive expenditures, and they really resemble sports tournaments, somewhat like Wimbledon, in which the contenders are eliminated one by one (often because they can’t maintain the expense of campaigning) until we have the final ding-dong battle for the top job. The two contenders get to choose their running mate – their doubles partner, so to speak – who can be as dumb and/or incompetent as you like, and who gets to be Prez if the winning contender is forced to retire or resign, or dies in office. Think of the then much-ridiculed Dan Quayle, the still-much ridiculed Sarah Palin, and the now-dreaded Mike Pence.

It’s part of the USA’s anti-collectivist, libertarian culture that they celebrate the ‘great man’ tough guy up against the forces of some evil or at least seriously flawed organisation or state (think Sylvester Stallone, Arnie Schwarzeneggear, Bruce Willis etc), and this is how they like to see their President, and seems to be why they give him such unparalleled power. It seems to me kind of juvenile, in the way of Hollywood movies. And then, having foisted so much power on him (always him, but more of that later), they then (or some of them) use this as an argument to bolster his power even further by suggesting he’s too indispensable to be charged with a crime while in office!! I’ve not yet heard from any American commentator who has recognised or highlighted the sheer absurdity of this conundrum.

Now, I recognise that the USA can compare itself favourably with other democratic nations. India and Indonesia spring to mind, as more or less fledgling democracies with massive problems of poverty, ethnic and religious tensions, as well as the ever-present lure of graft and corruption and the pressures of tribal and in-group associations. And I’m insufficiently expert in the political systems of Germany, France, Spain and most other Western European nations to make detailed comparisons, though I suspect such comparisons would be highly embarrassing to the USA. I do have a certain familiarity with the Westminster system, however, and it strikes me as superior to the US system in a number of ways. The most obvious is that there is virtually no chance that the Prime Minister can ‘go rogue’, as the swampy US President has done. The Prime Minister is primus inter pares, someone who has come up through the ranks, proven herself within the party, and sits with her party, at its head, in parliament, leading and participating with that party in debates before the House. Her principle role is to articulate the party’s agenda and policies, to deal effectively with objections and to bring those policies into law by shepherding them through the tough terrain of the House and the Senate (in the case of Australia). There’s limited opportunity for lone wolf, ‘off the cuff’ decision-making – there’s a whole crew of elected cabinet ministers tasked to deal with immigration, foreign relations, trade, education, health, infrastructure, agriculture and the like, and it would be considered scandalous if the PM made some impromptu decision over their heads (or tried to). It would be seen as arrogant and unprofessional and frankly extraordinary, not just because it breaks precedent, but more importantly, because the cult of the go-it-alone vigilante hero is not part of our society – that’s a uniquely American thing, at least in its intensity. A disciplined, collegial approach is what is expected here.

The difference is exemplified by the fact that Trump was a ‘Democrat’ a few years back and now he’s a ‘Republican’, but it should be clear to any reasoning observer that he’s neither. His interest in politics, such as it is, is only for the power, attention and money it provides him. And the US system enables this in that their President virtually never passes through the doors of their parliament, let alone works there. The ‘White House’ represents an entirely separate institution, and the importance of the more or less daily White House briefings highlights this disastrous separation and the over-emphasis placed on the heroic ‘commander-in-chief’.

Time and again I hear US pundits lauding the checks and balances which prevent their swampy president from going ‘full dictator’, but any comparison with the Westminster system will show that no leader in that system could have survived this long while attacking the law enforcement and justice systems, ridiculing basic science, supporting and praising foreign enemy states, and refusing to act on well-attested interference in the political system by those states. It’s also important to note that dumping a toxic or under-performing or unpopular leader under the Westminster system is much more easily done and far less traumatic. In fact it happens quite often between elections.

There is no such thing as impeachment in the Westminster system. It seems obvious to me that if a national leader, or any other senior cabinet minister, is charged with a crime, they should step down until a judicial decision is reached, though this may depend on the severity of the alleged crime. Impeachment, as I understand it, is a purely congressional process, and should have no place in deciding on criminal behaviour – as should be obvious. The whole business of impeachment has a political odour to it, and the Westminster system is far better without it.

There are no doubt many other problems with the US system as such, including the vetting of candidates for high office (you shouldn’t let just anyone run for President) and the rules regarding making money from the Presidency, but I want now to turn to other reasons why the US may be more likely to turn dictatorship than other western democracies.

These reasons, to some degree, go back to Plato and Aristotle, unabashed elitists who warned of demagogues and their appeal to the ‘mob’. Trump’s base consists largely of the USA’s ‘left behind’, people without tertiary education qualifications, people who are largely under-employed and underpaid, people who feel trapped and angry, people who hate the political and business elites, people with grievances they can’t readily articulate. True, there are other supporters, elitist libertarians who want more freedom from taxation, the crooked rich people who flock to Mar-a-lago and Trump Towers, etc, but they are small in number if large in ego and influence. It’s worth noting here the remarks by Tony Schwarz, author of the ‘Trump’ book The Art of the Deal, to the effect that Trump actually despises his base, whom he sees as losers. What he delights in, of course, is their fawning allegiance to him, and the way he can whip them into a fervour over practically nothing. Trump, of course, spends no time in the company of steel workers or farmers or war veterans, he far prefers the exclusive company of crooked rich people.

In most democracies the ‘working-class’, among whom I grew up, are somewhat divided in their political allegiance, torn between the promise of support for social services, infrastructure and jobs from the left and the promise from the right of crack-downs on immigration and crime, and generally macho law-and-order and nation-building issues or rhetoric. In the US we might embody these promises in people like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the one hand, or Trump or one of his many imitators on the other. But what’s interesting is that, among the elite, and the fourth estate in particular, there’s a clear bias against the kind of interventionist policies and social services that place Australia, for example, way ahead of the USA on the OECD list of best countries to live in. Too often I hear journos in the US interviewing candidates like Ocasio-Cartez and questioning them skeptically on their ‘socialist’ policies. ‘Socialism’ is quite possibly the dirtiest word in the American language, but what Americans call ‘socialist government’ is essentially what western Europeans and Australians and others call ‘government’.

It’s this bias, of course, that will forever prevent the USA from climbing further up on the OECD list. The libertarian fantasy, it needs to be asserted, is just as corrosive as the socialist fantasy. In the USA it means that the ‘left behind’, in their millions, are much more primed to look to a super-hero anti-state saviour with a slogan to make them all great, than to look to stronger regulatory models such as exist in western countries that are mere names to them. That’s why you have, at one end of the spectrum, angry, unhealthy, insular people with insufficient education and too few prospects while at the other end you have under-regulated parasitic capitalists, investment bankers, speculators and fraudsters – people like Manafort and Gates, the Koch brothers, Roger Stone and of course Trump himself, who happily enrich themselves while contributing zero to the common good.

In short, the problems the USA faces, post-Trump, are many-faceted and unfortunately well-entrenched. And to end on a purely selfish note, I’m just frankly glad their not my problems.